Fifteen days ago, the Georgia Green Party and the Georgia Constitution Party asked for reconsideration in the ballot access case. The Georgia Attorney General has not responded. It is somewhat unusual for a request for reconsideration to be filed, and to elicit no response from the other side.

The case challenges the Georgia ballot access laws for President, which are so stringent, no one has successfully petitioned for President in Georgia since 2000. The U.S. District Court had dismissed the case on the grounds that the U.S. Supreme Court opinion from 1971, Jenness v Fortson, means those procedures are constitutional. But the parties had then asked for reconsideration, pointing out that Jenness v Fortson did not concern presidential ballot access, and also that more recently, the U.S. Supreme Court, and the 11th circuit, had both said presidential ballot access is entitled to more protection than ballot access for other office. Georgia is in the 11th circuit.

Ballotpedia has analyzed the primary election returns from August 7. See here. In Kansas, 34% of all incumbent legislators running for re-election who had primary opponents were defeated. Kansas has closed primaries.

In Michigan, which has an open primary, 14% of all legislative incumbents running for re-election who had opponents were defeated. In Missouri, which also has an open primary, 23% of the legislative incumbents running for re-election who had opponents were defeated.

But in Washington state, which has a top-two primary, not a single legislative incumbent was defeated for re-election. These results confirm earlier research that no system is kinder to incumbents running for re-election than top-two systems. In California’s top-two primary in June this year, no incumbents were defeated. Thanks to Eric O’Keefe for the link.

Both the Republican and the Democratic primaries for Michigan’s U.S. House race in the eleventh district were interesting this year. The primary was August 7. Here is an article about the results.